We love Bermuda (this was to be our 5th visit), so when I saw that this was the last cruise to Bermuda out of Baltimore this year, I jumped on it. We are relatively experienced cruisers - we have been to Bermuda a cruise ships twice previously, but we have never cruised on Carnival before. After we booked the cruise we found that Bob's brother also had a large group going. We have never managed to get on the same sailing with him before and we were looking forward to it. Eating with them made up for the somewhat disappointing food. I rented a scooter for our last cruise to Alaska and it worked really well, so I had bought a scooter and was going to try it out on this cruise.

After we picked up the rental car Saturday and loaded all the luggage and scooter into it in preparation to driving to the port Sunday, we got a robo call notifying us that the ship was late. Normally we rent a car and drive to the port as this is cheaper than paying for parking. Finally I got an email from Carnival stating that we would board Monday morning 9-12 because the ship ran into the big low with seas of 20 feet and the young teen club and the arcade room on deck 4 were damaged.

We live a good two hour drive (90 miles) from the airport. It would be difficult for us to get to Baltimore by 9 - I used to do it when I was working, but I had to leave before 6 a.m. After a lot of discussion, Bob thought we should turn in the rental car and drive my car up. I found a hotel (Country Inn & Suites near BWI) that had free cruise parking and made a reservation there for Sunday night. The room was $139 and we could leave the car for up to 20 days for free. This is a much better deal than renting a car each way and MUCH MUCH cheaper than paying for parking at the pier. Read more